Friday, May 9, 2008

In which our hero reveals how much of a geek he is and uses an inappropriate number of parentheses.

Ok, for those of you who haven’t figured it out, hot actress in a tight, revealing costume on the DVD box does not mean the movie is going to be good. How I haven’t figured this out by now is beyond me. I’m an optimist, I guess.Two films recently viewed by this writer illustrate this point; since relapsing into my embarrassing comic book addiction last month, I’ve been playing catch-up with comics-based movies. There have been some shitty comic-based movies made in the last few years, but two that I had somewhat high hopes for were Fantastic Four and Catwoman, neither of which are new but neither of which I had seen, FF ‘cause I’m just not much of a Marvel guy (Iron Man is an exception, I think it might have been the first superhero title I ever picked up, and the movie totally kicked ass) and CW ‘cause I just never got around to it.So anyway, here I am, diving back into the shady world of comic books and all the associated vices that go with (movies, toys, etc.) after being clean for over three years (blame Robert Downey, Jr., did I mention that Iron Man kicked ass, totally?), looking for movies that I’ve missed, or forgotten, and there is Jessica Alba in a tight blue jump suit with just the right amount of cleavage showing (is there a wrong amount?) and Halle Berry in skimpy pleather and a mask.‘How could I miss?’ I thought as I picked the movies up and headed for the checkout; both based on comics and both starring smokin’ hot, talented actresses in revealing costumes. Well, I did miss because both movies sucked. FF, I’m not too sure what went wrong, I never read the books, but I know a little of the history and there were some funny parts, but the only characters I ended up giving half a shit about were the Thing and the Human Torch, everyone else could have just stayed home, including Miss Alba’s Sue Storm.CW was an even bigger disappointment. Batman has always been my favorite superhero, so I’ve had a thing for the Catwoman for a long time now, since Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether, and Julie Newmar took turns playing her on the 60s TV show to Michelle Pfeiffer’s purrrrrfect portrayal in Batman Returns, and then to the excellent Ed Brubaker scribed comic book series.Anyway, I don’t know how someone could take such a well-crafted character, excellent actors (Berry, Benjamin Bratt and Sharon Stone) and create such a piece of shit film.Oh, wait, yes I do. Someone at Warner Bros. was thinking, ‘Damn, what have we got right now?’ as Spider Man was breaking all kinds of records in ’02, and someone answered with a piece-of-crap script which had been languishing for years (guessing on that part), the above mentioned actors were roped in, and some ‘90s era Sega special effects added and, voila!, piece of shit film that no actress could have saved.